The most endangered buildings in England and Wales - in pictures

The most endangered buildings in England and Wales - in pictures

A survey has outlined the 10 most at-risk Victorian and Edwardian buildings nominated by the public, including the first lending library and a crumbling cemetery chapel in Salford. Here, the Victorian Society – who published the list – tell the buildings' stories

Thursday 18 October 2012 03.04 EDT
First published on Thursday 18 October 2012 03.04 EDT

Paid for by rail workers, the Mechanics Institute contained the UK's first lending library and performed health services that inspired the NHS. It closed in 1986 and has since been vandalised and targeted by arsonists

Wingfield station, c1970

This mortuary chapel looms over a Salford cemetery, its walls creeping with ivy. Designed in a gothic style, it also shows arts and crafts influences and has art nouveau stained glass windows. It's been abandoned since the 1980s

Like an enormous staircase, this reservoir spillway was designed to allow the release of water during periods of heavy rain. It's the UK’s only listed spillway but the owner, Yorkshire Water, plans to remove its steps and replace the sandstone walls with coloured concrete

Pevsner once called this church 'ambitious but not showy'. It was abandoned over 20 years ago; its stonework is now crumbling, its wooden floor rotten, and even its weathercock has been damaged by a low-flying Chinook from the nearby base

Commissioned by Welsh industrialist and MP Lewis Llewelyn Dillwyn, Hendrefoilan House was built on the site of a medieval farmhouse that had the same name. It was taken over by Swansea University in the 1960s and was used for accommodation and teaching. Now water floods down the outside walls, leading to damp inside, and lead thefts have begun to occur

Ipswich’s County Hall was once the area’s jail and law court, then the headquarters of Suffolk county council. It has been abandoned for years, stripped of copper and lead, and its panelled interiors have been vandalised. It was sold to a private owner but never restored

Holborn Circus, London (1867–1869, by William Haywood, unlisted)

Dickens’s Dictionary of London (1879) described Holborn Circus as 'perhaps … the finest piece of street architecture in the city'. The City of London now intends to void the Victorian plan by moving the statue to the side and blocking one of the roads, leaving a vast area of tarmac with no focus

Originally a showcase for the brewers Mitchells & Butlers, the Waterloo was always meant to impress. Behind the baroque facade is a superb interior with original tiling up the walls and ceilings, though the recent lead thefts will undoubtedly have caused damage